Is this going to become a precedent for some one causing an accident and, basically, getting away with it?
Read that report again and tell me how exactly the lorry driver "caused" the accident.
As it says ""It submitted that, given the relative sizes of the lorry and the carriageway, it was a counsel of perfection to hold that the lorry driver should have driven even closer to the edge of the road than he had,
which amounted to a distance of only a few inches"."
If that lorry *had* been "a few inches further over to the right, would it actually have made a difference or would the biker have just hit it a bit further down? Well, we can't ever know for sure, but the fact is that the biker had almost the *whole width* of his side of the carriageway to use which should have given him plenty of space to take the bend and certainly have left him with an escape route.
There is no such thing as a ' too high a standard of care' when it comes to using the highways and byways of this world. If you collide with someone on the opposite carrigeway because you are on the wrong side of the road in any way shape or form, its your fault!!
And what happens if you over-cook a bend, panic when you see something coming in the opposite direct and try to slam on the anchors, causing you to run wide, get target fixated and end up crashing into the on-coming vehicle?
Remember that the charge was "negligence", damages for which, from what I can see, are currently defined in English Law by the case Caparo v. Dickman [1990] which "introduced a 'threefold test' for a duty of care. Harm must be (1) reasonably foreseeable (2) there must be a relationship of proximity between the plaintiff and defendant and (3) it must be 'fair, just and reasonable' to impose liability"
Now I can see an argument for the first two, but the problem comes when you get to the third part "it must be 'fair, just and reasonable' and the biker *DID* admit that he "could have driven more to the centre of the lane" which, whether you like it or not, is effectively an admission of liability (or, indeed, negligence) on his part.
What if, whilst taking the bend, he'd hit a patch of gravel or some road-kill whcih was just on his side of the road, lost it and gone straight on through the hedge because he wasn't able to manoeuvre to avoid the obstruction? Who would you hold liable there?